Preface by Eric Dunning and Stephen MennellCivilization and InformationAcknowledgementsA Digression on NationalismIntroductionCivilization and Violence: On the State Monopoly of Physical Violence and its TransgressionChanges in European Standards of Behaviour in the Twentieth CenturyDuelling and Membership of the Imperial Ruling Class: Demanding and Giving Satisfaction'History of Culture' and 'Political History'From Humanist to Nationalist Middle Class ElitesThe Duality of Nation-States' Normative CodesOne the Ethos of the Wilhelmine BourgeoisieThe Pro-War Literature of the Weimar RepublicThe Decay of the State Monopoly of Violence in the Weimar RepublicLucifer upon the Ruins of the WorldTerrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany-Expression of a Social Conflict between GenerationsThe Breakdown of CivilizationThoughts of the Federal RepublicEditorial Postscript by Michael SchroterNotesIndex

Elias's magnum opus... Having read it, no one will say again that the awkward gap between the 'bird's eye view' and the insider's experience of society cannot be bridged, that the tortured ways of history cannot be both explained and understood. -- Zygmunt Bauman, author of Modernity and the Holocaust This study is particularly brilliant, even for the great Elias. In it he returns to the shame analysis that he began in The Civilizing Process, clarifying great swaths of German and European cultural history. A must for your reading list. -- Thomas J. Scheff, University of California, Santa Barbara